Recettes

Kenyan Beef Biryani

Kenyan biryani is a Swahili coast dish, and the coast is where the Indian Ocean has been depositing influences on East Africa for more than a thousand years. Arab, Persian and Indian traders working the monsoon routes brought rice, spices and techniques to Mombasa, Lamu and Zanzibar, and what developed there is neither Indian nor Arab but Swahili. The biryani method itself is unmistakably South Asian: meat cooked in a spiced yoghurt gravy, rice parboiled separately with whole spices, the two layered and steamed together so the rice finishes in the gravy's steam. The Kenyan version keeps that structure. What it does differently is in the details, with fried onions used in quantity, tomato leaning heavier than in most Indian versions, and fried potatoes worked through the meat rather than served alongside. It is occasion food. Biryani appears at Kenyan weddings, at Eid, and at the large family meals where the effort is justified by the number of people eating. The orange food colouring streaked through part of the rice, which purists elsewhere would query, is standard in Kenya and is part of what a Kenyan expects a biryani to look like. Served with kachumbari, the raw tomato and onion salad, it is one of the clearest expressions of what the coast is.

★★★★★Les mieux notées

1 hr 30 minHardKenya · African

Recette de Abigael Alfredah · Africook

Awaze (Ethiopian Chilli Dip)

Awaze is the Ethiopian red chilli paste, built on berbere and loosened with an alcoholic liquid into a thick dip. It is extremely hot, it takes five minutes to make, and it goes with almost everything on an Ethiopian table. Berbere is what it is built on, and berbere is itself a blend: dried chillies, garlic, ginger, onion, rue seeds, cardamom, cloves and cinnamon. Awaze takes that and turns it into something spoonable. The liquid matters more than it sounds. Traditionally it is tej, the Ethiopian honey wine made with gesho, the shiny-leaf buckthorn, or areki, a strong spirit. This recipe uses red wine, which the contributor prefers and which is far easier to find. Its traditional place is at celebrations. Awaze is made for weddings and special occasions and served with raw meat, and gored gored, cubed raw beef with dipping sauce, is considered by many an unofficial national dish that no Ethiopian celebration is complete without. That is worth knowing about what the dip is for. Because of the wine, this is not alcohol-free, and mitmita, the other Ethiopian chilli blend with pili-pili peppers and cardamom, is a related but different thing.

5 minEasyEthiopia

Recette de Blessing · Africook

Kitfo (Ethiopian Minced Raw Beef)

Kitfo is very finely minced raw beef, warmed through with spiced clarified butter and chilli. The name says what it is: kitfo comes from the Amharic for chopping finely. It is Ethiopian and Eritrean, and it is celebration food, a dish for major holidays, weddings and family occasions rather than an ordinary weeknight. Two things define it. The first is niter kibbeh, the clarified butter infused with garlic, ginger, cardamom, fenugreek and other spices, which is what carries flavour into meat that is never exposed to direct heat. The second is mitmita, the fierce Ethiopian chilli blend built on pili-pili peppers with cardamom, cloves and salt. Both are what separate kitfo from any other steak tartare. Doneness has its own vocabulary, and the names matter because they are what you order by. Tere kitfo is fully raw. Leb leb is warmed just enough to melt the butter through it. Yebesele is taken further still. Gored gored, which is on this site as its own recipe, is the closely related dish where the beef is cut into cubes rather than minced, same tradition, different knife work, noticeably different in the mouth. It is served with injera, and usually alongside gomen, the collard greens, and ayib, the fresh Ethiopian cheese, whose mildness is there to answer the heat.

30 minMediumEthiopia · East Africa

Recette de Blessing · Africook